Worked All of Britain, My Experience
I have been a Radio Amateur for a number of years now, coming into the hobby via the Air Training Corps; where I used to teach radio to cadets.
After a couple of years operating on VHF and UHF FM only I managed to get hold of a Yaesu FT991. This expanded my operational ability to HF as well as SSB, AM, digital modes as well as C4FM. I played around for a year or so and got bored of short QSOs but as I am also not one to have a “RAG chew” as I find this monotonous. My cadet career had instilled a need for a purpose to operate radio and not just make contacts and generally have conversations. My mind started to via towards the idea of undertaking some awards. But, which ones?
I had played around with SOTA and HEMA1, both activating summits and chasing. However a lot of this activity was out of range of me and I don’t have a lot of time to activate summits.
After a quick Google search I came across Work All of Britain (WAB). It seemed very well thought out and had been an award scheme that had existed for quite a while, so I decided to give it a go.
It cost me £7.50 to join and for the money I got two CDs and a record book, with the all important book number printed on the front. The CDs came with a digital version of the book and a number of Excel spreadsheet to allow me to record my work. But, what did I actually have to do?
Simple
I had to contact other amateurs and exchange certain pieces of information; my WAB Square (more on that further down), swap and read back our RST reports and the name of the operator as well as the callsign. Once I had this in my station log, I can then transfer the callsign and date into my WAB log under the appropriate grid square.
Not so simple
There are actually a huge amount of awards you can chase, for a long time; I just chased grid squares before deciding which award I was going for. I settled for what I assume is the most common; the Squares Award. The squares Award is broken down into six award levels each having a greater requirement; Basic, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Sapphire.
You can then choose which section under each level you are going to use. I simply chose UK HF. I found the amount of forms on the CD confusing, which one related to the award I chose? It took me a while but I found it. Allot if information is contained on the website and the CDs. I just had to get it straight in my head. I also discovered chasing squares isn’t that easy either.
WAB Nets
I was finding it hard to find QSO’s with stations whom new their WAB Square, so I decided to join a WAB Net. Namely the 80m net on 3.760MHz held most evenings. This, although enjoyable, I also found to be an ordeal. The net consists of a net controller and a deputy net controller. The Controller will run down his list of participants allowing each to talk to the other stations passing on the relevant information (In this case only being an RST Report, the net control can pass all other information; WAB Sq. Book Number, etc). Once the list of participants had been completed, he would then ask if other stations would like to join in. The role of the deputy net controller is to control stations that cannot be heard by the net controller. So I joined in; I got a good number of squares on my first and second attempts at this and whenever a new person joined the net… another square.
The problem I found was as time went on the list got longer and longer, so more time twiddling my thumbs. I listened for ages ensuring all my gathered information was correct. But I couldn’t keep going. I have a short attention span of around an hour or so. As my attention dwindled my turn in the net came round, I’m afraid I had to sign out. I couldn’t concentrate anymore.
Did I give up? No, I do thoroughly enjoy it and will continue to do more. I have a time issue as well. I am not good at staying up in the evenings as I have commitments early each morning.
What is a WAB Square anyway?
The country is divided up into a Grid system that is used on
OS Maps. Each is 100 Km² and is designated with a two letters.
I live in the grid marked ST.
Each Square is broken down further into 100 squares. When giving a normal navigational grid reference, I might write SU 458,621 as my location.
But to work out my WAB Square I take the first digit from the first group of three numbers, in this case “4” and put it in front of the first digit from the second group, in this case “6”. So my WAB Square is SU46. (This is just an example, not my actual WAB Sq.)
What Next?
I didn’t think I had collected many squares at all and was pleasantly surprised when I tallied them up the other day to reveal I had twenty. I’m still a long way off of the three hundred I need to get my first award but in fairness, due to other life constraints, I haven’t been able to put a huge amount of time into it; an odd hour here, a couple of hours there, often with little to no outcome. But I will keep plodding away at it and will try to increase the time I devote to it. It is good fun and has given me a purpose to use the radio. I may also try and pursue other awards in the future, but at the moment I will stick to WAB.
You can find out more about WAB on the Worked All Britain website